GRP Chapter 8

Several hours earlier, Mariaeks had listened to humans moving cautiously beyond the river.

The law specified insects. She had been in agreement with this for a hundred years.

'You know those thieves everyone's been talking about? They caught them.'

'I haven't heard anything about that.'

'My younger brother works at the castle. He told me—said it was a secret. Apparently the thieves are northern spirits. They've got them locked in the castle dungeon right now.'

'What kind of northern spirit lights campfires?'

'No, really! He said they're two spirits shaped like huge white wolves, about this big. That's why we're out here scouting now, taking this risk. In case something happened in Heimdrykze.'

Mariaeks had not realized she had crossed the river until she had already crossed it. Her awareness only returned now, facing the vermin's den. Only then did she grasp that she stood on the verge of violating sacred law.

Mariaeks stood, teetering like a dead tree on the brink. Unable to advance or retreat, she could only hope the Great God would grant her revelation. At the end of that path, surely there would be only the right answer. Why did all her choices feel so hasty and foolish? If only she possessed even slightly decent power—would things be better than this?

The only power Mariaeks possessed was making flowers bloom from her hands. Rhaevydie had laughed shrilly at the flowers blooming from Mariaeks's hands. 'What meaning does that hold, Mariaeks? Truly—what meaning can it have?'

Rhaevydie had been right. Heimdrykze was a place where the law of survival of the fittest applied thoroughly: the weak die, the strong survive. The only one who'd escaped that clear logic was Mariaeks herself. Thanks to the Great Absolute's arrangement, she'd survived despite possessing utterly useless abilities.

That thought led Mariaeks to a realization. She'd been under a tremendous delusion. How had she agonized over whether or not to save them, when without divine salvation she couldn't even breathe properly? It wasn't a matter of choice. It was a question of whether she could or couldn't.

'My precious Mariaeks….'

A wind swept past Mariaeks's ear. In that cold current, Mariaeks recalled the small, worn temple. The place where she should be. Where each day began and ended in peaceful repetition. Her entire world.

Mariaeks decided to follow the divine will. Unfortunately, there was one thing she'd forgotten. When had life ever flowed according to one's own will?

"Don't block the path, you…."

Suddenly, humans surging from behind jostled Mariaeks this way and that. One step, two steps, five, eight….

And so Mariaeks set foot inside the castle walls. She froze in place, turning only her head to gaze at the snow-covered mountain range beyond.

Mariaeks had expected something to happen the moment she passed through the gate. The mountain range would tremble violently and split in two, red light bursting from between. Or the sky would turn black. Or perhaps the Great God would descend to the vermin's lands and freeze the humans themself. In any case, she'd thought she would face a situation more terrible than any imagination.

But nothing happened. Only now could she truly grasp that the Great God slept. A hundred years after they'd fallen asleep, she finally understood. Perhaps the Great God wouldn't even notice her transgression.

Mariaeks turned her head again to look at the streets where humans wandered. And farther still, her gaze moved to the crude castle rising higher than other buildings.

'They've got them locked in the castle dungeon right now.'

Pink eyes gleamed.

"How is your body?"

At Samthyeon's question, Garth stroked his chin slowly and smiled.

"As you see."

"Like shit, then."

Garth nodded readily.

"What about the herbs you mixed this time?"

"The effects are dropping."

"You must be building resistance. Shall I try something different?"

After pondering for a moment, Samthyeon got to the main point.

"Did you gain anything from this journey?"

"Gain."

The gain Samthyeon spoke of meant any clue related to the curse. It had been about a year's expedition. Hopelessly short to find information he couldn't discover in a lifetime of searching. Garth answered with a cold smile.

"I see you didn't."

"Did you?"

Samthyeon grasped the necklace hanging over his robe and shook it. It was the symbol possessed only by ten high priests among Thul'Mhoriae's countless priests. A gesture that could be interpreted as 'Do you know who I am?'

It was worth knowing.

In the beginning there had been only the Void, which certain traditions also called providence, which were two names for the same condition. Two gods came into being in opposition to it. The one called Father—the god of destruction—sealed the Void inside his own heart and then ended his own life. His fragmented remains accumulated, coalesced, and became the continent. This was the continent's origin. It was not generally taught as such.

The sacrifice had not completely cleared the Void. Nothing still existed in the world. The god called Mother grieved and became a white tree, taking root in Father's remains. Life emerged in response to her creative power: two-legged things, four-legged things, things fixed in earth, things moving through water, things carried on wind. Scholars designated this period the Ancient Divine Age. This was accurate.

The ancient gods who inherited Mother and Father's combined power were born from remains that still contained the sealed Void. Being mixed with the Void from birth, they could not escape death. They understood this clearly and made arrangements.

The arrangement: each ancient god tore away a portion of itself, invested that portion with its power, and the portion became a lesser god. The process repeated. The repetitions accumulated across the time required for a great mountain to become sand. What remained were the current gods, humans, animals, plants, and the remaining categories of living things. The priests of Thul'Mhoriae had names for the current gods: half-gods, quarter-gods, or, when the arithmetic was carried to its conclusion, one-three-thousand-six-hundred-seventy-second gods. This was not technically inaccurate.

The ancient gods had been born carrying fragmented memories alongside their inherited power. These memories they inscribed into earth, rock, trees, hard minerals, and the ocean floor, in a language that was their own. The inscriptions remained. Humans called them ruins and relics. This was one name for them.

The fact that gods and humans shared a common origin—that the distinction between them was one of accumulated diminishment rather than fundamental kind—had not been established for a very long time. It had been present in the inscriptions. No one had read the inscriptions.

One priest spent a long time following them. They succeeded in interpreting the ancient language of a forest containing what was documented as a sacred tree. What they found required a revision of the operating premise, which was: gods are omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect; humans are incomplete and can only hope for salvation. The revision was as follows:

Gods are stones, and we are grains of sand. But we were all rock. Let's get along well, as the same rock.

The initial response was that the priest was insane. This was the expected response to information of this kind, and it lasted approximately as long as these responses typically last before the information outlasts them. The fact turned out to be the thing that united humans as a category. They had been ruled, wielded, made to obey—by beings that were not categorically different from themselves, only differently accumulated. A small current formed. Then a large river. The Thul'Mhoriae Alliance was the institutional result.

The priests of the Alliance had developed not as practitioners of devotion but as scholars tracing the inscriptions backward toward their source. Samthyeon was one of ten who led them. This meant, in practical terms, that he was the human who had come closest to understanding the true nature of the curse. It also meant that he held a position from which he could compel the cooperation of temples across the continent and receive it. He had, over the preceding decades, made consistent use of both.

Garth watched Samthyeon rummaging through his clothes. He pulled out something wrapped in tanned leather. A delicately crafted white dagger.

"A relic from a recently discovered ruin in the northeast."

Other temples apparently called Samthyeon shameless—a thieving, bottom-feeding bastard. Because he seized everything as soon as it was excavated.

"It's strongly engraved with fire and destructive power. Three people departed for the divine embrace during excavation, they said. Just from a finger-prick. I modified it a bit stronger in my own way."

Garth held out his hand, but Samthyeon couldn't hand over the dagger. Weariness didn't mark Samthyeon's face so much as complexity. Decades of accumulated heavy emotion laid bare. But Garth's patience didn't remain to receive it. He smiled and cast a cold gaze.

"Samthyeon."

At the short warning, Samthyeon exhaled a long sigh. Then placed the dagger on Garth's hand.

Garth gripped the dagger in reverse and aimed it at his own heart. Samthyeon watched him with sunken eyes.

The dagger's sharp point tore through cloth, passed through skin, pierced muscle, and lodged in his heart. Red blood began to spread across the white fabric. Garth's brow furrowed. The corners of his mouth rose. Time passed. The white tunic was soaked entirely in blood. Enough for an ordinary human to return to the divine embrace.

Samthyeon, who'd kept silent, couldn't hold back and spoke again.

"How is it? Feel like dying? Are you dizzy, is your consciousness fading?"